Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Headline of the Day -100: “SUFFRAGE HIT BY KINDNESS.; Senate Ready to Pass the Bill, but Ashhurst Talks Too Long.” Sen. Henry Ashurst (D-Arizona) (misspelled in that headline) gave a three-hour pro-suffrage speech, using up the time needed for a pro-suffrage vote, so the Senate moved on to the Alaska Railroad bill.

Straw Headline of the Day -100: “Straw Hat Appears in Mobile.” Sign of spring, or something, 1914-style.

Mesmeric Headline of the Day -100: “Raid Broke Up ‘Trance.’” Arresting 20 white people, evidently a Spiritualist meeting, at the home of a negro woman the Paterson, NJ who police describe as a “common clairvoyant.” She will be fined $100 and each of the attendees $3. For what crime, I don’t know.

The NYT letter columns for the past couple of weeks has been deeply concerned with palindromes.

Cardinal Cavallari, the patriarch of Venice, says the tango is “everything that can be imagined. It is revolting and disgusting. Only those persons who have lost all moral sense can endure it. It is the shame of our days. Whoever persists in it commits a sin.” He orders that absolution be denied to anyone who confesses to having tangoed without promising to abstain in the future.